Hard work pays off as CoServ maintains 99.99 percent reliability in 2023
CoServ Members had reliable, uninterrupted electric service 99.99 percent of the time in 2023, according to CoServ’s outage metrics. CoServ consistently ranks near the top among utilities in Texas and this year is expected to be no different.
Reliability for electric utilities is measured by the SAIDI [System Average Interruption Duration Index] score. Like golf, the lower the score, the better. For 2023, CoServ had a SAIDI score of 31.4, which means the average Member was without power for about 31 minutes out of the year.
If you factor in all the minutes of a year and consider the average time a Member was without power, CoServ had 99.99 percent reliability.
“Providing reliable service to our Members is something that we take a great deal of pride in at CoServ,” said Shea Hassell, Senior Vice President of Field Operations. “A top notch SAIDI score is a clear indicator of a lot of hard work by a lot of people across the organization, especially our field personnel. They do a great job, and I am proud of them and all of CoServ for achieving another great score.”
The SAIDI score is a national standard that compares all utilities on an apples-to-apples basis. Major storm events are excluded, as are power supply problems that are beyond the utility’s control.
While most utilities haven’t reported their 2023 SAIDI score to the state, looking back at previous years, CoServ consistently ranks as the most reliable utility in the state.
Perry Ancell, CoServ’s System Operations Manager, said CoServ upgraded capacity on power lines – meaning more electricity can flow through the lines – throughout the service area in 2023. That’s critically important when there’s an outage to a neighborhood, for example, because system operators can reroute power to another feeder line, in essence detouring the power around the outage to restore electricity faster.
This process, called backfeeding, is why Members will notice a short power outage, while crews are switching and rerouting power, and then power is restored. The actual repairs in the field could take several hours but Members will never know.